The American image as perceived by Japan

US image in Japan up sharply after quake

The above article was written by Shaun Tandon on behalf of the Agence France-Presse, a well-known, nonprofit newswire agency, and was released to the public last Tuesday. Originally written in English, Tandon's article focusses on the results of a recent Pew poll that aimed to gauge whether the Japanese opinion of the United States rose or fell after the calamity that was 11 March. Citing statistics, Tandon notes that there has indeed been a large increase in the percentage of Japanese people who view America in a favourable light — 85 percent of those surveyed, to be exact. Tandon also notes other tangentially relevant statistics, such as the percentage of people who no longer believe nuclear power should be in Japan's future.

While most newspaper articles demonstrate a strong bias towards one political viewpoint or another, newswires tend to state the technical facts and provide little analysis about what said numbers allude to in the greater scheme of things. That said, however, it is clear that Tandon is clearly writing this article for an English-speaking, most likely American audience — the location provided before the story's lead notes it as having been written in Washington and thus the information he provides is somewhat tailored to be pleasing to the American ear — he mentions Operation Tomodachi and helpfully notes that the word means "friend", which demonstrates that this article is targeted towards people with little knowledge of the Japanese language. Furthermore, Tandon's statement that "More than half of Japanese" believe that America has helped Japan through this crisis is designed to reassure non-Japanese readers that Japan now views the United States in a much more favourable light — indicating that the "majority" supports the relief efforts is much stronger than saying "52 percent".

Even though newswires are supposed to be somewhat unbiased, it is clear that this article has a somewhat Western-centric point of view — rather than differentiating between the categories of individuals surveyed, Tandon (or perhaps the Pew researchers) groups high school students with women and does not elaborate about their ages or why the individuals felt the way they do, and it is thus arguable that Tandon does this for simplicity's sake, in order to allow people uneducated to understand the gravity of the situation.